Back in the 1930s and 1970s, with the first sense of true fall in the air, it meant it was time to go back-to-school shoe shopping. The moms took their kids to the shoe store and helped them pick out a pair of solid leather oxfords for school every day and the money allowed for a pair for special occasions. For girls, that sometimes meant a pair of black leather patient shoes with criss-cross straps, like Mary-Jane’s.
A common and prominent fixture of a shoe store was a fluoroscope machine; he considered himself the best friend of a shoe salesman, particularly at specialty children’s shoe stores such as Buster Brown, Paul Parrot, and Red Goose. The fluoroscope machine was state-of-the-art and complemented the usual shoe-fitting methods. They were also known as “X-ray shoe fits.”
A typical fluoroscope machine was a brown wooden upright cabinet with an opening near the bottom into which our feet were placed. There was a button on top with an automatic timer that provided about twenty seconds of backlit X-rays of the feet. The X-rays traveled up through the feet to fluorescent green or yellow illuminated glass screens.
When the children looked through one of the three viewing ports on the top of the cabinet, one for the child being adjusted, one for the child’s parents, and the third for the shoe salesman, they saw a greenish fluorescent image of the child’s bones. feet and the contour of the shoes.
The fluoroscope X-ray view of their feet made it fun for the boys and girls to visit the shoe store. At the same time, it provided an image of the bones and soft tissues of the foot inside a shoe, supposedly increasing the accuracy of the shoe’s fit and, in doing so, improving shoe sales.
Back then it was thought that the shoe-fitting fluoroscope allowed sellers to better fit shoes, providing the best fit possible so shoes would last longer, meaning parents didn’t have to buy as many pairs. Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were installed in shoe stores from the 1930s to the 1970s, then disappeared.
The fluoroscope shoe-fitting machine was non-medical radiography, and as people began to learn more about the dangers of radiation, their reaction to using fluoroscopes for shoe-fitting changed from initial enthusiasm and confidence to suspicion and fear. In the 1960s and 1970s, the shoe-fitting fluoroscope was fading, as was the formality of buying shoes. Parents of Baby Boomers began choosing drive-thru over full-service shoe shopping and, to save money, increasingly stopped having a shoe vendor available.
Shoe styles were also changing; More kids started wearing sneakers instead of leather oxfords to school and play, but in the early 20th century, “X-ray cobblers” put so much fun into shopping for back-to-school shoes. school like buying a balloon today.
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